Don't Breathe a Word

by Jennifer McMahon

  “I should go,” he said, taking a step back.

  “And I’m also guessing you don’t love her. Not like you loved me. Remember, Dave? How you were going to take me away from all of this? We were going to California?”

  He stepped forward then and took me in his arms. He was trembling. His lips found mine and I knew it was wrong, I knew there would be repercussions, but in the moment, I just didn’t care.

  Fall, 15 years old

  Dear Diary,

  I’m being sent away. Banished, Sister calls it. Me and little Gene and David’s little unborn son or daughter are moving to an old farmhouse owned by some elderly distant aunt. She has an apple orchard. I’ll pick apples, learn to run the cider press. When she passes on, the farm will be mine. It’s all arranged.

  I’m never to live in Harmony again.

  I’m to stay away from David. No contact. Not until I prove I can control myself.

  “And what if I refuse?” I asked.

  “You can’t,” Sister said.

  “I don’t care what he does to me,” I said. “Teilo can’t hurt me any more than he already has.”

  Sister shook her head. “You stupid little whore. He’ll go after David.”

  So I packed up little Gene’s things, my clothes, a few books, and I got in the car without even saying good-bye.

  Phoebe closed the diary. They were passing the Lord’s Prayer rock.

  “Evie’s your sister,” she said.

  Sam nodded. “I know,” Sam said, as if he was finally seeing something that had been in front of his face all along. “I mean, I didn’t know it for a fact, but part of me always kind of felt it. I think Lisa knew, though. It was one of those things that I think everyone knew but no one dared say out loud. Everyone was too busy inventing their own twisted versions of the truth. It was easier to blame every mistake, every bad thing that happened, on the goddamn fairies.”

  Phoebe blew out a breath. “I don’t think we know what we’re up against,” she said.

  “Stories,” Sam said. “Fables. Fairy tales.”

  “But if people believe in them so strongly, doesn’t that give them power? More power maybe than even the truth?”

  Chapter 51

  Gene

  May 29, Fifteen Years Ago

  He’s a ghost. Here, but not here. Walking between the worlds. Moving in shadows. A shadow man himself, more phantom than living, breathing being. He’s been in the dark so long, he doesn’t remember the light.

  He’s the Hoochie-Coochie Man. The Hurdy-Gurdy Man. The Bogeyman.

  Boo.

  Mister Slinky slinking around. Peeping Tom. He’s Tom, Dick, and Harry. See Dick run. See Dick find Jane, smile at her. Think unmentionables.

  He doesn’t know movies, just the ones described to him by Evie. No TV where he lives, deep underground. No satellite or cable or movie of the week.

  He knows books, though. The silly, predictable romances with their pink covers and ape-chested men. He knows Frankenstein, “Cinderella,” and “Rumpelstiltskin” where the horrid little man spins straw into gold for the miller’s daughter, who promises him her firstborn.

  That is not my name, he taunts, trying to make her guess.

  Hurdy-Gurdy. Hurdy-Gurdy.

  “You are a prince among men,” his mother used to say. As if that made up for things. As if that would be enough.

  Enough.

  For a long time, loving Lisa was enough. Just the feeling sitting inside his chest banging away like a gorilla in a cage. It was the strongest feeling he’d ever known. This need, this ache to meet her, to be near her. He’d heard stories of her his whole life. Stories from Evie, who crept down to the basement after each trip to the Nazzaros, full of stories of adventures. Things Lisa did. Stories Lisa told. Lisa. Lisa. Lisa. Lisa became the sun the world orbited around.

  Round and round. All around the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel. The monkey thought ’twas all in fun. Pop! goes the weasel.

  They played a game, he and Evie. A game where she pretended to be Lisa. She acted like Lisa, spoke like Lisa, wrapped a towel around her head and said, “Don’t I have the most beautiful hair you’ve ever seen?”

  Yes, Gene nodded. Yes. Yes. Yes. He let himself touch it, his fingers lost in the soft terry cloth.

  And when it would end, when Evie would get called back upstairs for chores or homework or dinner, she’d drop the towel and say, “Oh Gene, I wish you could meet her for real!”

  He wished too. He ached with the wish.

  Evie snuck snapshots to him. Lisa on the beach. Lisa biting into a candy apple at the fair, her lips crimson and sticky. He’d touch her lips in the picture, then taste his own dirty fingertip, teeth buzzing from the sweetness he imagined. Evie gave him a tape of Lisa telling stories. He listened to it over and over, until the tape got fuzzy and her voice filled his brain and stayed there, talking to him in his dreams, keeping him company when he was alone every day for hours.

  The worst was when Evie was at school. His mother would bring him lunch sometimes, when she remembered. Cheap greasy peanut butter on stale bread. Watery soup. She didn’t speak, didn’t look at him, just dropped off the food and latched the door from the outside. She used to talk to him, used to read him stories, but as he got older, she just quit seeing him. It was like he was turning invisible. Like his skin and flesh, even the organs inside him, got so pale they were translucent. Translucent. That was a word Evie taught him. “Like mica,” she told him. “And window glass. Plastic bags you put apples and broccoli in at the store. They’re all translucent.”

  “You’re the smartest person on earth,” he told Evie and she smiled wide, her teeth like a shark’s.

  She snuck down after school, bringing treats: half an apple, new pencils, books from the school library. She was the one who’d taught him to read and write. To do math. He’d learned right along with her after school each day; together they’d struggled over vocabulary lists, science reports, fractions. She brought him newspapers. Books of fairy tales. Books on magic and natural history. Boy Scout manuals.

  “There’s nothing you can’t learn from a book,” she told him.

  He taught himself to sew. He built elaborate mousetraps out of rubber bands, wire, and old coffee cans. Sometimes, at night, when their mother was out cold, Evie would unlock the door and they’d go outside together. They’d take long walks through the woods and old orchards.

  He asked Evie a million questions. What was Lisa’s middle name? Maude. Favorite color? Green. Favorite season? Fall. What did Lisa love best in the world, more than anything? Fairy tales.

  A plan began to form. He would go to the woods behind her house. He would pretend to be someone else—someone brave and powerful and full of magic. And he would give her the most wonderful gift of her life—a magic book. He snuck into his mother’s room one night when she was out cold and found the book hidden under her bed. The Book of Fairies. She’d shown it to him before, told him it was written by his father and that she and Phyllis had found it down in Reliance when they were girls.

  “You can only watch,” Evie warned. “You mustn’t ever let her see you. You mustn’t speak to her or make contact in any way. If Mom and Phyllis find out you’re there and that I helped you, we’re both dead.”

  He nodded. Nod. Nod.

  He knew the rules. He was supposed to stay in the basement. Live underground. No one could see him. He was that special. A walking secret. But when you spend your whole life being a secret, your biggest wish is that you had someone to tell it to.

  Evie took their mother’s keys the night before, let him out of his room, opened the trunk of the car, and hid him there among their bags. She gave him a knapsack with matches, their great-grandfather’s binoculars, peanut butter, a loaf of bread, and an old plain-faced white Halloween mask to put on “just in case.” He snuck in The Book of Fairies and two trinkets he’d found in his mother’s bedside table drawer: an old penny and a medal that said SAINT CHRISTOPHER
PROTECT US. He didn’t have much to give, but Lisa would like these. He knew she would. Evie drew a map of the house, yard, and woods, showing where Reliance was, and put it in his shirt pocket.

  “We’ll be in Cape Cod for three days, so you’re on your own then. When I get back, I’ll bring you food as often as I can. God, I can’t believe I let you talk me into this. Promise me you’ll be good, Gene. Promise you’ll stay hidden.”

  “Promise,” he said. And she closed the lid of the trunk gently over him.

  Chapter 52

  Phoebe

  June 13, Present Day

  Home.

  This could be a scene from a Norman Rockwell painting: Phyllis in the rocking chair, giving her infant grandson a bottle. But Phoebe knew better. She knew that the grandson was also a grand-nephew and there, lurking in the doorway that led to the kitchen, was the man who lured Lisa away by pretending to be the King of the Fairies. A man Sam’s height with the palest skin Phoebe had ever seen. Black hair and eyes and six fingers on each hand.

  An icy dagger ripped through Phoebe as his eyes met hers across the room.

  Hazel’s hidden child. The supposed son of Teilo, King of the Fairies. Half fairy, half human, Hazel had said. He walks between the worlds.

  Sam hadn’t knocked—had burst in through the front door into the living room, Phoebe and Gabrielle right behind him.

  “Mom?” Sam said. Phyllis looked up, smiled.

  “Hello, Sam,” she said. “We’ve been expecting you.”

  “What the hell is going on?” He was squinting in disbelief at his mother and the baby.

  Phyllis kept rocking, cooed at the baby in her arms. A tiny thing, with dark hair and eyes, who wouldn’t stop fussing. He pushed the bottle out of his mouth with his strong tongue, made an unhappy face. Phoebe had this idea that her maternal instinct should kick in, making her adore the tiny infant. But the truth was, she found him startlingly unappealing—grotesque even. He was so pale, his skin so thin that you could see a network of blue veins pulsing. And his cry sounded more animal than human—the squeal of a starving piglet, a creature who would never be satisfied.

  Phyllis sang:

  Say, say my playmate

  Come out and play with me

  And bring your dollies three

  Climb up my apple tree

  Holler down my rain barrel

  Slide down my cellar door

  And we’ll be jolly friends, forever more!

  Phoebe shivered. The baby opened its mouth and screamed until it was purple-faced and breathless.

  In front of Phyllis, on the well-polished coffee table covered in the runner Phyllis herself had crocheted, was The Book of Fairies. The cover was a deep green color and well worn. Phoebe longed to pick it up and at last see what secrets were shut inside.

  She wondered if it was really the same book Hazel and Phyllis had found in the woods when they were girls.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Phoebe caught a glimpse of a man-shaped form leaning against the mantel, shaking his head. You know better, he seemed to say.

  She blinked and he was gone.

  The room, which had once seemed so warm and inviting to Phoebe, suddenly felt small and airless. The jars of potpourri were sickly sweet, making her feel light-headed and ill. Her eyes went to the photos on the mantel: Sam, Lisa, Mom, and Dad smiling on a beach. The happy family. From another frame, Sam’s great-grandfather, Dr. Eugene O’Toole, glared at them with glimmering dark eyes.

  Phoebe realized how very wrong she’d been about this house, this family. It was far darker, more dangerous than the places she’d grown up in. In the dingy little apartments her mother rented, everything was out in the open. Their lives were dirty and squalid, but they didn’t pretend to be anything else. Here, things seemed so normal, so perfect, but it was all a deception.

  “I think,” said Phyllis, looking at Gabrielle, “that little Maxwell would like to come see you. He isn’t very interested in the bottle. And he’s hungry. Would that be okay, dear?”

  Gabrielle gave a deep nod, more like a bow, and stepped forward to take the squalling baby. Phyllis rose, giving them the rocking chair. Gabrielle lifted her shirt and the baby dove in and started to suck. Gabrielle rocked, hummed to the baby, a contented smile on her face. Little Maxwell’s rigid body relaxed at last.

  “A baby needs a mother,” Phyllis said, shrugging and smiling. “And a mother needs a baby.”

  “But she’s not his mother, right?” Sam asked, watching the nursing infant with dismay. “It’s Lisa’s baby and this isn’t Lisa.”

  “She’s the only mother Max has ever known. If Lisa was here, she’d care for the baby. But she’s not. Now shall I put on some tea so we can visit awhile? I think we have a lot to talk about.”

  “What happened to Lisa, Mom?” Sam asked.

  Phyllis flinched. “There were some . . . complications when she gave birth.”

  Now it was Phoebe who flinched. She hoped no one noticed.

  “My God,” Sam said. “She’s been alive all these years, living in that little room in Hazel’s basement? And you knew? You went and visited her?”

  Phyllis nodded.

  “She was your child!”

  “Yes. But she made her own choices. You remember how she was, Sam. So fiercely determined to walk her own path.”

  “She was twelve, Mom,” Sam said, his voice cracking.

  Phyllis made a clucking sound, shook her head. Too bad, too bad.

  “It was you in the woods, wasn’t it?” Sam said, looking at Gene, studying his strange, pale cousin. Gene didn’t respond, didn’t even look in Sam’s direction. His eyes looked glassy and vacant. Phoebe wondered if he’d even heard Sam.

  “Gene,” Phyllis said, “will you go make us a pot of tea, dear. And get some of those cookies from the tin in the cupboard.” The pale man nodded, then slipped away into the kitchen. He walked slowly, with a limp.

  “You knew where she was. What was happening. You were in on it all along,” Sam said.

  Phyllis leaned forward, speaking in a hushed voice. “There are things you don’t know. Things I tried to shield you from. For your own good, Sam. And for the good of the family.”

  Sam gave a stormy-sounding laugh. “The family? But I’m your family, Mom. Lisa was your family! Why would you protect Gene over us?”

  Phyllis sighed, knitted her fingers together. She looked from Sam to Phoebe as she considered how best to continue. “Your aunt Hazel was pregnant at thirteen, the result of an incestuous relationship with our grandfather.”

  Interesting, Phoebe thought. No mention of Teilo.

  “But I thought she got pregnant when she was sixteen,” Sam said.

  Phyllis nodded, her face tightening, the corners of her mouth turning down. “That was with Evie.”

  “And Dad was Evie’s father, right?” Sam said.

  “Good heavens, no! Did she tell you that? It was an orderly at the nursing home she worked at. She had a schoolgirl crush on David, and I think, in her fantasy world, he became Evie’s father.” Phyllis cleared her throat and continued. “I don’t know how long the abuse with our grandfather went on. But she was pregnant at thirteen and there was no question whose child it was. The decision was made to tell the world that the baby had died in childbirth. But Hazel wanted to keep him. And Grandfather let her. But there were rules. The first rule was that he had to be hidden away. The second, he wasn’t to be told who his father was. So Hazel raised the boy to believe that he was fathered by the King of the Fairies. She told him the same stories we’d heard growing up. About how there was a door to another world in Reliance. How our grandfather was a fairy changeling left behind. I think that Hazel came to believe they were the truth.”

  The six fingers weren’t a sign of fairy blood but a sign of genetic mutation, of inbreeding.

  “But I read Hazel’s diary,” Phoebe said. “You believed in Teilo. You told Hazel he was Gene’s father.”

  Phyllis sighed. “Yes. I play
ed along with the fantasy. It seemed easier for her to deal with than the truth. So I encouraged the delusion. Hazel was always . . . imaginative. She was like Lisa that way.” Phyllis turned and looked at the photo of Lisa and Sam on the mantel, and smiled ruefully.

  “My God,” Sam said. “Gene never stood a chance.”

  “Think of it, Sam,” Phyllis said, looking up at him, eyes wide. “An imaginative boy growing up all alone in that house, raised on a steady diet of fairy tales. The only friend he had was his sister, Evie, who was sworn to secrecy. She brought him gifts. Told him stories about the world, about his family, you and Lisa. He loved Lisa even before he saw her. Evie brought him photos, recordings of Lisa’s stories. Then, when he was sixteen, he convinced Evie to help him stow away in the car so he could see her himself.”

  “He was coming for Lisa,” Sam said. “And Evie knew it.”

  Phyllis nodded. “Apparently, he promised her he wouldn’t make contact. He would just watch. But we all know how that turned out.”

  “Did you know?” Sam asked his mother. “Did you know he was out there?”

  Phyllis shook her head. “Not until it was too late. Evie tried to stop him. She did her best.”

  “That’s why she told Gerald and Becca,” Phoebe said. “I bet she was hoping he’d pick Becca instead. And when that didn’t work, she showed the book to people, trying to put the whole thing out in the open, bring in outsiders to put a stop to it. And that last night, she dressed up like Lisa so he’d take her instead of Lisa.”

  It was heartbreaking, really. Phoebe could see it all too well—poor Evie, alone with this secret. She’d let Gene out, brought him to Lisa. She must have felt responsible, as if her own invisible, lifelong friend had suddenly come to life, making dangerous plans, and she was the only one who could stop him. But she couldn’t, could she?

  “Where’s Evie now?” Phoebe asked.

  “I have no idea,” Phyllis said, but Phoebe wondered if she was lying. What had Phyllis and Hazel done with her? Had Evie played out her part and now become useless—a liability, even? Phoebe remembered Gabrielle saying it was Evie who had let her go. Had she crossed a line? Was there a new grave behind Hazel’s house?